Unction from a Mountebank
by Alexandra Spar
Summary: Galvatron's continuing mental deterioration is beginning to affect the Decepticons' hopes of victory. Cyclonus, torn between loyal support for his leader and his own sensibilities, must make another difficult choice.
1. Default Chapter

DISCLAIMER: Transformers is the property of Hasbro/Takara. No copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made.

_...it is an unweeded garden _

_That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature possess it merely._

_--Hamlet, Act I, scene II_

Charr, Cyclonus reflected, was a planet peculiarly suited to its current occupants.

After the war they had retreated here—far enough away from the victorious and accursed Autobots to allow themselves to lick their wounds in peace, but still within reasonable distance of Cybertron. The planet itself was utterly desolate, scattered with ruins of earlier dwellers' construction. But Charr's most valuable characteristic was undoubtedly the fact that it abounded in natural rock formations which exploded with a satisfying noise upon being hit with fusion-cannon blasts. It was, Cyclonus thought to himself, a perfect device for Galvatron to vent his unending fury on.

The Decepticon commander was taking full advantage of this geographical feature. Cyclonus noticed absently that he'd gone through five rock outcroppings already this morning. He would have to get the Constructicons to check over the rubble and see if there was any interesting ore in it.

He watched his leader, half a mile out on the desolate plain stretching before the Decepticon headquarters, causing irreparable damage to millions of years' worth of geology. From this distance Galvatron appeared to be no more than a speck of violet and silver-grey, dancing up and down in rage and blasting the already well-blasted landscape with vivid heliotrope bursts of light. Most of the Decepticons had either retreated to their quarters out of harm's way, or had buggered off the planet entirely until Galvatron's temper subsided a little. He, Scourge and Soundwave were the only ones left in the command center.

Soundwave, impassive as always, wasn't paying attention to the performance; Scourge, however, was watching Galvatron avidly through a high-powered scope.

"He's foaming again," Scourge reported, a hint of glee in his voice. Soundwave, predictably, ignored him, and Cyclonus folded his arms and attempted to follow suit, but it was difficult. "Cyclonus, you've gotta see this, it's amazing."

The jet lost a brief battle with himself and took the scope Scourge offered him. It took a few seconds to focus, and then Galvatron in the grip of one of his fits suddenly sprang into digital clarity before his optics.

Cyclonus winced. His leader's face was twisted in rage, his mouth set in a snarling rictus, optics savagely bright; Scourge had been right, dully glowing energon foam was dribbling from the corner of his mouth. As Cyclonus watched, Galvatron shrieked something and loosed another burst from his cannon, then staggered a bit and sat down hard on a handy heap of rubble.

Cyclonus handed the scope back. "He's depleted himself," he said dully, "again. He'll want energon when he comes in."

Scourge gave him a glower—he recognized this one as _you slagger, why is it always ME who has to fetch and carry around here?_—and stalked off in search of energon. Cyclonus returned to watching Galvatron, his optics dark.

Mostly Galvatron's attacks were brought on by completely ridiculous and inoffensive circumstances, but this time Cyclonus had to agree that there was some justification for his anger. They had just returned from an apocalyptically unsuccessful raid on an Autobot outpost near Goo, an attack which had resulted in the loss of two Sweeps and the incapacitation of both Razorclaw and Blast Off. He himself had been hit in his right wing, and had been meaning to go and get Hook to do some work on it, but just then Galvatron had gone screaming off to blast the livid slag out of a few rocks, and he had felt it incumbent upon him to hang around until his leader came back.

He sighed. It was better that Galvatron should shoot rocks than Decepticons, of course, and Cyclonus gave him credit for holding his rage in check as much as he had; but his attacks were getting worse and more frequent, and he was now regularly depleting himself to the point of total exhaustion. They hadn't won anything particularly impressive against the Autobots in some time, and Cyclonus couldn't help wondering how much Galvatron's deterioration was affecting the Decepticons' chances at a final victory.

Cyclonus tried not to think about Torqulon, about his abortive efforts to get his leader some competent mental treatment. It had been some time since that unpleasant little episode, but he still woke from recharge with the organic stench of the place sharp and sour in his olfactory receptors. He thought to himself, now, that he would never be able to rid himself of the memories of Galvatron struggling in the grip of the world-web, of the look in his optics as the Alia converged on him, the desperation and the pain and the fear.

Galvatron feared nothing, Cyclonus reflected, except losing control to another entity. Perhaps that was another side-effect of the plasma bath that had caused his madness in the first place; but Cyclonus rather thought it was due to Unicron, and Unicron's utter command of him, after the reformatting. He remembered Galvatron's red-lit agony as Unicron had punished him for failure, and the equally brilliant red flare of his optics as that pain became fury at the planet-transformer's presumption.

Cyclonus could just about remember what he had been, before Unicron. He had not had a choice in the matter, of course, no more than Galvatron had; but he remembered, dimly, the conversation between Unicron and Megatron, hanging half-destroyed in the void, still proud despite the pain. _No one summons me_.

But Unicron had; and Unicron had altered Megatron in body and in mind, and Cyclonus could not imagine his leader's fierce pride taking that particular indignity with any sort of grace. Galvatron, like the mech he had been before, refused to countenance anyone's power over him. Cyclonus couldn't help but think it was due to the memories of being Unicron's slave.

Galvatron had said it himself, struggling so fiercely to escape the web-bonds of Torqulon that his joints groaned and sparked: "You have _no right_ to change what I am...."

And it was he, Cyclonus, Galvatron's most loyal follower, who had brought this on. It had been his fault. Cyclonus would have given anything to take it all back, not to have listened to that accursed Quintesson or signed the committal papers. He had relished the pain of his crushed armor when Galvatron had attacked him after being freed. He had wanted nothing more than to look down the barrel of that copper-gold cannon one last time, and find absolution at the end of it.

But there had been a moment, he reflected; a moment after he had said his piece: "Mighty one, forgive me, I did not realize..." when Galvatron's optics had seemed to clear a little, to lose some of their febrile, manic brilliance, and he had said quietly, "No..." as if he understood Cyclonus, and was agreeing with him.

Of course, the madness had snapped back at once, and he had hit Cyclonus so hard he couldn't get his gyros straight for several minutes—and then he had killed the planet. Galvatron was not one to hold grudges for very long; he tended to kill those with whom he had a problem, and be done with it.

The command room door hissed open again, and Scourge stepped through, carrying a stack of energon cubes that pulsed with a clear rose-coloured light. "He's on his way," he reported. "Looks like slag."

Cyclonus rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "Wonderful," he said, and stepped away from the windows. He knew there would be no reasoning with Galvatron, not in this particular mood, and wondered fatalistically if there would be enough left of him to be worth repairing.


	2. 2

_...and to gather,  
So much as from occasion you may glean,  
Whether aught, to us unknown, afflicts him thus,  
That, open'd, lies within our remedy..._

_-Hamlet, Act II, scene 2_

Scourge and Soundwave had beat a hasty and diplomatic retreat as Galvatron approached the base, leaving Cyclonus alone with the stack of energon cubes and the responsibility of attempting to mollify their leader. He sighed, leaning against the console and folding his arms.

Galvatron's footsteps—none too steady—approached the command room. Cyclonus heard him pause outside the main doors; there was an interesting series of sounds followed by a strangled howl of fury, which Cyclonus interpreted to have been Galvatron trying to blast his way through into the command room and discovering he didn't have the energy. He sighed again. After a moment there was a clang, and the blast doors slid back to let Galvatron stalk inside.

Wordlessly Cyclonus held out an energon cube to his leader.

"Give me that, slag you!" Galvatron snarled and grabbed the cube from his outstretched hands, storming through the connecting door to his throne room. Cyclonus followed, silently, with the rest of the cubes, and watched as Galvatron slumped onto the throne, gulping energon, rivulets of iridescent fluid running down his chin. It was difficult for Cyclonus, watching him, to keep his face impassive and unreadable, but he had had considerable practice. Galvatron half-choked, pounding himself on the chest to clear his filters, and drained the cube. Cyclonus approached the throne cautiously and proffered another cube as Galvatron hurled the empty one at a handy wall with a satisfying crash.

It took him the full contents of three more cubes before he was satisfied, lying back against the throne and wiping energon from his mouth with the back of one hand. With the fresh infusion of energy, his optics were pulsing brilliant scarlet again, a venomous colour that meant two things to Cyclonus—that he was back at full strength, and that the plasma tic was worse. He could see the faint blue-white sparking of the damaged circuits at the edges of Galvatron's helmet; not so much sparks in the ordinary sense of the word, but a kind of visible radiation given off by the corrupted circuitry. It was more obvious in the dark.

"Where are the others?" Galvatron rasped, eventually, clearing his throat of energon residue. "Where is my _glorious_ Decepticon army of destruction?"

Cyclonus wondered how to put this diplomatically. "They are repairing the damage they sustained, mighty one," he said, "so that they will be able to serve you with their full strength."

Wrong answer. Galvatron roared in fury and let loose a fusion blast. Cyclonus had seen it coming in time to throw himself out of the way, landing with a shock that jarred his damaged wing down to the struts and sent black stars drifting across his vision. The wall opposite Galvatron's throne would need to be repaired soon, he thought, getting to his feet. "Mighty one..."

Galvatron's fist swung round and connected with his side in an explosion of pain, throwing him several feet back and sending him crashing to the floor again. He could feel connections jarring loose inside his torso, fluid conduits on the point of tearing open. "Do not give me these pitiful excuses! I want the entire force ready for another attack as soon as possible!" The light of his optics pulsed irregularly, like a malfunctioning fuel pump.

"Of course, mighty one," Cyclonus agreed, dragging himself to his feet once more and returning to the side of the throne, but he knew perfectly well that they would need several days to get the wounded back to full fighting capacity. Part of him thought that Galvatron knew that too, but there was no possible way he could get his leader to admit it.

The blue-white flares of plasmatic radiation around Galvatron's temples grew brighter, looking almost like a halo, and he slowly turned to stare at Cyclonus. His optics were a poisonous magenta, burning too brightly in his alabaster face. "This is _your_ fault," he said, slowly. "This is all _your_ fault, Cyclonus. You should have fought more valiantly! You should have sacrificed yourself to further the glory of the Decepticons!"

Cyclonus kept his face perfectly expressionless, no easy task when faced with those mad flame-coloured optics. "We were outnumbered, mighty Galvatron—"

"I said no more excuses!" Galvatron surged from his throne and grabbed Cyclonus by the throat, his fingers crushing the blast armour as if it had been aluminum alloy. The Decepticon second struggled painfully to draw in oxygen, his damaged systems quickly beginning to overheat, but Galvatron's grip was merciless. "I tire of this, Cyclonus," he hissed. "Time and again we have been forced to retreat by these pathetic Autobots. I will not tolerate another failure!"

Cyclonus couldn't speak, clutching at Galvatron's wrist; his optics flickered as the circuitry began to overload. Galvatron snarled in disgust, the flares brighter than ever, and hurled his second-in-command at the wall with such force that Cyclonus's right wingtip broke clean away and bounced a few times. He stalked over to the fallen mech and gave him a kick in the side for good measure before leaving the throne room.

It wasn't long before Cyclonus came back online, slowly, damage reports tabulating in his mind; it was difficult for him to think with the crushed armour at his throat compressing vital conduits. He struggled to his feet, picked up the chunk of metal that had until recently been part of his right wing, and fought down the pain and the dizziness. Most of the damage was confined to his side, where Galvatron's parting kick had finished the job his first blow had started: Cyclonus could feel fluids leaking and damaged circuitry sparking. It was by no means the worst shape he'd been in after one of Galvatron's displays of temper, but he would have to see the Constructicons nonetheless.

He coughed, painfully, and spat bright energon, before pushing himself away from the wall and making his way down the corridor.

"Cyclonus," Hook smiled, less than pleasantly. Had he been feeling better, the Decepticon second might have said something about the surgeon's expression—but at the moment, it was all he could do to stay upright. The Constructicon nodded to one of the repair tables, and he sank down on it with some relief. He was in that rather amusing state of semiconsciousness where everything seems slightly hilarious, no matter how serious it might actually be, and the sight of the repair-bay lights glittering off Hook's laser scalpel awoke only a vague discomfort in him, not the shuddering revulsion he normally felt. He didn't like the Constructicons; didn't like being at their mercy.

"Slag, Cyc, what happened to you this time?" Scavenger asked, peering interestedly over his comrade's shoulder. They had his torso plates off by now, exposing the wreck of his left side, and Hook had connected him to an auxiliary energon feed, beginning to suction out the fluids spilling from his ruptured conduits. "Looks like Predaking stepped on you."

Cyclonus tried to focus on him, but couldn't. "Galvatron," he rasped. "Not happy about the battle." Leaking fluids were beginning to clog his oxygen intakes, and he coughed thickly. Hook turned up the suction, and after a moment the hideous feeling of suffocation began to recede.

"_He's_ not happy about the battle," muttered Hook, setting aside the suction tube and beginning to repair the wrecked circuitry. "What about _me_? I'm the one who gets to hammer out all the dents the slagging Autobots leave us with. I'm working my fingers to the endoskeleton here." He held out a hand without looking up, and Scavenger handed him another instrument, still looking on with interest.

Cyclonus tried to think of a snappy retort, but failed completely, and stared up at the repair bay ceiling instead. His optics were still only half-functional. The ceiling was a haze of grey metal, tinted here and there with darker corrosion; it was easier to look at than the glittering, sharp-edged movements of Hook's tools. He drifted, slightly, the pain beginning to ease with the influx of energon from the drip feed, and found himself thinking once again about his leader, and his leader's own pain.

It had not been easy, of course, trying to get the vanquished and demoralized Decepticons together after Unicron's death; however, somehow he had managed it, calling on what was left of their loyalty to their commander and their millennia of obedience. He remembered standing there under the sour red sky of Charr, exhorting his comrades to give till it hurt—to donate whatever little energy they could spare to the purpose of finding Galvatron and restoring the Decepticon power structure, no matter what. Cyclonus wasn't sure if it had been racial memory or just the simple will to be led by someone, anyone, with power, but they had given up their energon for the cause. It had been both exhilarating and terrifying for him to take command, but at the time he had not been at leisure to consider it in depth: the urgency of finding and resurrecting Galvatron, of attempting to rebuild the Decepticons' power, had been more important than his own leadership woes.

The worst part for him had come on the planetoid where they had found Galvatron, after the more complicated bits of the quest had been achieved. The excitement and peril of breaking into Unicron's orbiting head and finding the evidence for Galvatron's whereabouts paled in comparison to the stark horror that had assailed him when he'd first met Galvatron's bright mad optics, and had realized that the leader he'd known was gone—melted in the plasma pits, leaving nothing but fury behind. He had stood silent and unmoving while Galvatron's fists left dents in his armour, both dumbstruck at the change in Galvatron and transfixed by his own position as Galvatron's immediate subordinate, and it was only after his leader had hurled him backwards into the superheated plasma that he'd realized what this meant for him and for the entire Decepticon army. Even that short immersion in the raging bath had shaken him. He could barely imagine what the long soaking had done to Galvatron, already scarred by Unicron's manipulations and the damage he had taken in the battle.

He had clambered out of the pit, and been almost immediately knocked back in by Galvatron, who was frothing with rage and shooting at anything that moved—and it was Scourge who had defused the situation, after all, soothing Galvatron's rage with an exhibition of toadying that surpassed even Cyclonus's skill. Cyclonus could remember as clearly as if it had been minutes ago how shocked he'd been to see that halo of plasmatic radiation break out around Galvatron's head, oddly beautiful, throwing the planes and angles of his face into sharp relief. He had not known, then, the extent of the damage; but the flares of blue-white light limning Galvatron's helmet were disturbing nonetheless.

And they had suddenly shut off; he remembered that, and remembered how Galvatron's optics had flared and faded to a normal, steady Decepticon red, losing their hectic fire. He remembered the relief he'd felt when his leader snapped out an order, and launched himself into space; and remembered the reawakening of pride that came with that relief.

Of course it had been worse than he'd thought. Things were almost always worse than Cyclonus had thought; it must be some kind of cosmic law. Galvatron's sickness—he'd hesitated, then, to call it "madness"—had only become more obvious as time went by; in battle after battle Cyclonus had had to watch out not only for the Autobots but also for Galvatron's own fusion blasts, directed at anything and everything in range. They had been sent on impossible missions, thrown into combats they could not possibly hope to win, and beaten to slag by their own leader after the inevitable defeats. Decepticons didn't expect tender loving kindness from their commanders, but even they were hard put to follow Galvatron's leadership. It was more than just the frustration of being led over and over again into unwinnable fights that bothered Cyclonus, however; try as he might, he could not escape his loyalty to Galvatron, his concern for the other mech, and his futile desire to please him. Galvatron was unpleasable, unless you brought him a nice juicy Autobot to torture.

In a pinch, a Decepticon would do. Such as Cyclonus himself.

He'd grown aware, slowly, over the months, that the bright flares of the plasma radiation were painful to Galvatron. The glow was only visible in atmosphere; in the hard vacuum of space there was no molecular haze to slow down the frantic flight of discharging, poisoned energy. Only on Charr, and on the worlds they visited which still retained some sort of atmospheric pressure, did the blue glow appear. Once, beneath the surface of an alien sea, he had seen it flare brighter and further than ever, spreading around Galvatron's face like a crown of heatless flames, as the waveform slowed enough to pass into the visible spectrum. It was both terrifying and lovely. He remembered seeing the dim blue glow of radioactive slag burning underwater, back on a half-forgotten world he'd known before Unicron had altered him. He'd passed a hand through the play of that blue glow, and felt nothing; but when his fingers had begun to pit and corrode, he had realized how poisonous its beauty must have been. That image came back to him with increasing frequency, these days.

He had watched his leader writhing in agony under Unicron's control—watched with his fists clenched and his circuits taut with fear—and had come to realize that the seizures induced by the plasma-tic were not unlike those fits Galvatron had endured when Unicron expressed his displeasure with his new creation. From time to time Cyclonus had caught a kind of helpless desperation in Galvatron's optics, quickly replaced with the sparkling mindless fury. He still held out hope that Galvatron could be healed, somehow. That the madness could be reversed. The others didn't share that optimism; he remembered a delegation of them coming to him and explaining their discontent in no uncertain terms. He'd felt the worst of both worlds coming down on his pointy head: he had no power, but he had ultimate responsibility. And the Quintesson's words, coming so close on the heels of the Decepticons' ultimatum to him, had pushed Cyclonus over the edge; and he had allowed himself to believe that what he was doing was not, in fact, profoundly counterproductive. And so he had tricked Galvatron into the journey to Torqulon, and in doing so had merely accelerated his deterioration.

It had been months now since that abortive attempt, and Galvatron had not mentioned it after their return to base. He had merely beaten Cyclonus to within an inch of cold shutdown, and henceforward had ignored the episode entirely. Cyclonus couldn't help noticing that his frenetic rages had grown worse after the experience with the Alia, or that he seemed to be in pain most of the time these days. More than once Cyclonus had caught a glimpse of him pressing his fingers to his temples with such force that the joints groaned—hands forming a protective cage as if he feared his head would burst. He'd seen him leaning too heavily against the walls, and once he'd been passing Galvatron's quarters in the night and heard him retching harshly behind the closed and locked door. Galvatron hid it well, of course, and most of the Decepticons weren't perceptive enough to notice that their leader was hurting, but Cyclonus wasn't fooled. He also wasn't quite stupid enough to bring it up in conversation.

_This can't go on much longer_, he thought to himself. _Something must be done. Somehow...I must put an end to this. One way or another, it must end._

Slowly he became aware that Hook was closing his torso plates. The Constructicon's voice came from a long way away: "That's it," he was saying. "Get out of my repair bay and go recharge. You'll be back to full capacity in a cycle."

Cyclonus sat up, dizzily, and waited until his gyros caught themselves before trying to stand. He gave Hook and his team a brusque nod of approval, and left the bay, returning to his quarters; he had barely managed to code the keypad lock behind him and collapse on the bed when his abused body sank into recharge.

After the door to the med bay had closed behind the injured Cyclonus, a pair of dull red optics lit in the shadows of a damaged corridor a little further along. The optics had been there for a while now, their infrared sensor field shedding no light in the visible spectrum; now they lit and glowed dimly, narrowed in interested concentration. It was far from the first time the owner of the optics had seen Cyclonus drag himself in for repairs after a solo meeting with Galvatron; however, there had been something in his face besides ordinary pain this time, something which made the watcher in the corridor consider that perhaps the time was ripe for an intervention.

He waited, silently, until the repaired Decepticon second emerged, and followed him at a distance to his quarters; he could hear the faint hum of the recharge field as it engaged, and nodded to himself. Galvatron would no doubt be sulking in his own quarters, and Cyclonus would not stir for at least twelve hours. Nobody would miss him.

Night on Charr was not much different from day, but the watcher was still glad of the dimness as he crept out past the sensor arrays at the entrance to the Decepticon headquarters, and transformed.


	3. 3

Unction III

Disclaimer as before: TF and all related characters and indicia belong to Hasbro and Takara and are used without permission; no copyright infringement is intended and no money is being made.

"Interesting," said Rodimus Prime, steepling his fingers.

He and the newcomer sat alone in his office, the vast windows opening onto one of Cybertron's plazas, now traversed with a sharp terminator line between night and day. As he watched, the line crept slowly further across the plaza, engulfing towers, entryways, the few passersby who were still out. At this point in the solar cycle, there was still a defining line between day and night; still a difference. He preferred it this way.

"I really think he's ready," said Punch, who was standing by the window crysteel, not facing his leader. "And he's proven himself manipulatable before now."

"By the Quintessons," Rodimus agreed, dryly. "Look, Punch, I wouldn't dream of questioning your judgment, but I'm not sure it's viable to get involved in the Decepticons' unpleasant little home lives. Even if Cyclonus were to accept your...subterfuge, there's no guarantee that it couldn't be traced back to us."

Outside, the night had almost completely finished filling up the plaza; here and there telltale lights glowed dimly in the dusk, marking the positions of exits and power ports. Starshine lent a faint glow to the sky, but it was almost impossible to tell where Cybertron ended, and the vastness of space began.

"And if it is?" Punch turned around, folded his arms. "If my plan works, then we won't have Galvatron to worry about any more—and the Decepticons aren't gonna look anywhere else but at Cyclonus. It's a surgical strike. Cut off the head, and the body will die, Rodimus—they'll be too busy fighting amongst themselves to worry about who set the whole thing going." The spy's voice held a hint of a smile, despite his enigmatic faceplate. "They'll turn on him. Before, when they were totally disorganized, they followed Cyclonus because they didn't have a lot of choice. Now they've got at least some energy stored up, and they never liked him to begin with. There won't be any problems."

The Autobot leader got up, stretching, and joined Punch by the windows. "I wish it was that simple," he said. "There are a million things that could go wrong. And Galvatron himself is still dangerous, even if he is completely insane—_because_ he's insane. It's an unknown quantity; he's unpredictable. He could very easily just lose patience and shoot Cyclonus to bits before the plan is carried out." _And then we have to wonder who he chooses as 2IC next....a job I don't particularly envy Galvatron,_ he thought, considering the ranks of the Decepticon horde. Maybe Punch was right.

"And if he does that," said Punch, "then we've got one less Decepticon to bother with, and a lot of disorganized infighting. We don't really stand to lose out on this one, Rodimus."

Rodimus sighed. "It would be nice to have it over with," he agreed, and leaned against the edge of the window. "There are so many projects we haven't dared to work on for fear of Decepticon attack. The power cores...the planetary jets..."

"The central information storage modules," Punch added. "And without the Decepticons getting in our way, we could expand our trade networks with other worlds."

Rodimus nodded, looking out at the bleak metal vista and for a moment seeing not dark-blue metal, barely lit with enough energy to keep the planet itself online, but the bright golden glow of a mythical age. "Perhaps Cybertron could be made great once more," he said, almost to himself. Silence followed his words for a long moment.

The spy followed the direction of his leader's gaze and saw, in the distance, the sparkling trail of a meteor burning itself to ionized particles as it thrust through the fragile atmospheric shell surrounding Cybertron. _If I was a superstitious bot,_ he thought, _I'd take that as a sign._ Beside him, Rodimus made no sound, but a slight clenching of his fists told Punch that Rodimus had seen the star falling, too, and perhaps had thought the same thing.

He detached himself from the windowframe and looked up at his leader. "So, what's the verdict?"

"Watch him a little longer," said Rodimus, shaking off his reverie. "I'm not dismissing the possibility out of hand. I just want to be sure that our results will be as intended."

Punch nodded. "I have an idea about the compound itself," he said, "but I want to talk to Perceptor first. And I won't do that until you give the thumbs up."

Rodimus gave him a weary grin. "There's a good little Autobot warrior," he said. "You're dismissed; go refuel. And if you see Magnus wandering around looking as if he hasn't got enough to do, you could send him up to see me. I've got several things to discuss with him."

Punch nodded, grinning behind his faceplate, and hurried off. When he'd gone, Rodimus returned to his desk and flopped down in the great chair, resting his feet on the datapads littered across the desktop in a way that would make Ultra Magnus shudder if he saw it. The idea of sending a spy into Decepticon headquarters to manipulate Cyclonus into doing the unthinkable....well, it was both repellent and fascinating. It completely went against all he could remember of The Autobot Way; he couldn't see Optimus ever having agreed to something like this. But then, Optimus hadn't had to deal with Galvatron. He'd had the much more predictable, much saner, rather less voluptuous Megatron to contend with, and complicated plots and subterfuge hadn't been needed; they could get all the information they needed from the skyspy and from Cosmos, and actually infiltrating the undersea base had been both a dangerous and an unnecessary strategy—save for when they had to go and rescue some damned fool who'd got himself captured. Things had been aboveboard in those days.

Times had changed.

Rodimus found himself grinning at the ceiling, recalling some of Megatron's hostile takeover bids. Of course they'd been terribly serious at the time, but really...how many times could you try to steal the magic crystal flavour-of-the-week and use it in a superlaser before it got boring? He'd always attacked at dawn, too, for some reason. Rodimus had personally thought it was so that the Autobots never got a chance to sleep late on a weekday morning. Yet, even with the constant threat from Megatron's forces, the routine had become a trifle...well, routine. Receive a report of unwarranted energy surges in some governmental installation or geothermal feature, go and find out that yes, it was yet again Megatron trying to build a superlaser or suck energy out of Old Faithful or reformat a multi-Cray operating system to serve his ends, thwart Megatron, exchange one-liners, roll for home. These days he had a lot more than just the Decepticon leader to contend with, of course. He had the Quintessons. And feuding planets, and ancient time-travel installations, and more plotting than the entire citizenry of sixteenth-century Florence could have imagined.

There was an old human curse, Rodimus thought. _"May you live in interesting times."_ He hadn't quite understood that, back when he'd been Hot Rod. Well...maybe now they might have a way to make the Decepticons' existence a lot more _interesting._

The window had darkened to almost complete blackness now. As he watched, another tiny brushstroke of light traced a sweep down across the sky, leaving a trail that sparkled faintly as it faded; another meteorite had met a remarkably pretty doom. He found a smile tugging at his mouth for the first time in days: a real smile, which felt surprisingly good.

By the time Ultra Magnus let himself into the office, Rodimus's mood had almost completely transformed into rather sinister optimism.

-----------------------------------------------------------

_ ::equilibrium dysfunctionsubroutine XK10883 running::_

_ ::subroutine cancelledgyrostability circuits unable to initialize: irretrievable failure at XK109alpha::_

_ ::auxiliary gyrostability circuits online and compensating::_

_ ::main neurocable bus at 140 rated capacity: overload imminent::_

_ ::failure at X7234a: overload overload overload::_

_ ::subsidiary net online: override successful::_

He came out of recharge slowly, and blinked to get the annoying data streams to stop scrolling down the left side of his visual field. The movement sent another flare of pain down the sides of his helmet, and when it cleared, the world was back to its slightly reddish self.

Sitting up on the recharge plinth, Galvatron pressed his hands to his face, overriding the ever-present plasma tic's pain with a slightly different pain, and forced the feedback down. He couldn't remember exactly what he'd been doing, but he seemed to recall a pair of red optics flaring in desperation, the hard curve of a white throat bending and crumpling under the pressure from his own purple fingers. _Ah_, he thought, rubbing at his temples, _Cyclonus got in my way again. I _have_ warned him about that. _

He got up and walked over to the window, staring out at another dull Charr dawn. The rock formations seemed slightly different than he remembered, and then another stray signal flared through his short-term storage modules and he recalled blasting several of them to slag the afternoon before, half-blind with his rage and the pain it lit inside his skull. There was a sort of relief in wholesale destruction; he couldn't blast his own mind to bits, but blasting everything else to bits went some little way towards making him feel better.

_...blasting....blasting things...blasting Autobots..._

His fist clenched on the windowsill, hard enough to dent the metal. He looked down at the dents, at the scratched purple curves of his fingers, quivering slightly as the force he was using to close his hand met the resistance of the windowsill, and forced the hand to relax; for a moment, there was something like relief, as his conscious command overrode the plasma damage, and then a wave of it slammed through him, and he watched—somewhere very far inside himself—as his fist reared back and punched a hole directly through the wall.

Some time later, after cursing and jumping up and down and shaking the maimed hand, and after a short and dangerously silent consultation with Hook and his microwelders, Galvatron stalked into the command room to find Cyclonus and Soundwave already hard at work.

"Report," he snapped.

Both of them threw him crisp Academy-perfect salutes, and again there was that little, faint, delicious wash of relief, and again the plasma rage flooded through him. "What is the status of my Decepticon force?" he snarled. "Are we prepared for another assault?"

"Mighty one," said Cyclonus, and his voice seemed more than usually lugubrious and annoying, "we have not formulated an attack plan...we must prepare..."

"Prepare _nothing_!" Galvatron shrieked. "We are _Decepticons!_ We need no _strategy!_"

"Mighty Galvatron," Soundwave cut in, and as always that toneless processed voice seemed to calm him, to call to some little tiny beleaguered chunk of his real self deep inside all the chaos and the pain and the rage, "we have a report of an Autobot power installation in one of the junk belts left after the destruction of Quintessa. May I suggest that Cyclonus and Scourge lead a scouting party to gather more information?"

"An Autobot power installation?" Galvatron repeated, fingering his chin. "Very well. Cyclonus, gather Scourge and the Sweeps and be off. And _no mistakes_ this time."

Cyclonus snapped off another salute, turned on his heel, and marched out. Even the way the mech _walked_ was getting on Galvatron's frayed circuits this morning. Perhaps he'd have another _conference _with Cyclonus when he returned. Yes. That would be something to enjoy.

"Our forces are at eighty percent strength," Soundwave intoned. "Probability of success in the case of a direct attack on the installation: ninety-nine point seven three."

"Excellent!" Galvatron gave him a rather manic grin. The communications officer nodded in acknowledgment and turned back to his console.

Galvatron watched as, on the main screens, Cyclonus and Scourge mustered a force of several Sweeps in the base's main courtyard. One by one the hovercraft took off; only Cyclonus, shifting into jet mode as he leapt into the air, turned to salute the watching cameras with a waggle of his wingtips, before the scouting party banked off and shot away into the sky. Galvatron, caught off guard as he watched, found a faint smile tugging at his mouth—and a moment later had to hang on to the back of the command chair as a blinding plasma seizure struck him. His vision went bluish-white, shot through with vertical scrolling static; only his grip on the chair stopped him from staggering as the auxiliary gyros flared offline and the pain roared and raked its claws inside his skull.

It was over in a moment; the seizures always passed quickly, leaving him weak and drained and dizzy. As his optic circuitry flickered back online, he glanced around, trying to see if anyone had caught it; Soundwave was still bent over the console, his back to Galvatron, apparently unconcerned.

"Soundwave, I am returning to my chambers," he rasped. "I do not wish to be disturbed."

Soundwave turned to him, nodded. "Yes, Galvatron. We will not fail in our mission." There was no curiosity in the level, expressionless tones. Galvatron let go of the chair back, unaware that he'd again left finger-dents in it, and stalked back out of the control room. He managed to make it back to the privacy of his quarters before the inevitable retching began; the seizures were now routinely getting to the point where the pain and the gyro malfunction set off his autonomic self-preservation systems. He'd have to remember to have Hook shut off that particular subroutine.

If he could ever manage to think of anything other than the fury, that was.

Galvatron sat down hard on the edge of his recharge plinth and concentrated on the greater goal. Cyclonus and his Sweeps would bring back further information, and they would go out there and they would utterly destroy the accursed Autobots' pathetic power installation, and then—then, when he'd achieved even some tiny victory—this agony would recede. It always did. There was relief, after every success, and blinding, crushing pain after every defeat.

He would succeed. He had to.

In the command room, Soundwave regarded Galvatron's finger-dents—the back of the command chair was hardened durasteel alloy, and it looked rather like soft clay that someone had squeezed in anger—and shook his head. The flare of the plasma radiation had been so bright that his own optic sensors had stepped down their gain about five levels during the attack; they were only now returning to their normal sensitivity. The amount of energy discharging had been on the order of a decent-sized incendiary charge detonating right next to Soundwave. He wondered how much longer Galvatron could bear it. How long any of them could.

The seizure had lasted only 30.8 seconds by his internal time register, but for beings as technologically sophisticated as Galvatron and Soundwave, a second was a long time in itself. It had not been easy to pretend he hadn't noticed anything when his own systems were still reeling from the blast of energy, but Soundwave knew perfectly well that any indication of concern would get him soundly beaten, and possibly shot up as well. He had merely waited until Galvatron had come out of the seizure, and given him some technically accurate information to allow him a dignified exit, before the situation worsened further. Cyclonus was not the only Decepticon who'd noticed Galvatron's progressive deterioration, and Soundwave's exquisitely tuned audio receptors had easily picked up the sounds of Galvatron's humiliating sickness despite the shielding of his quarters.

Soundwave allowed himself a sigh—a luxury he almost never indulged in—and went back to work. While he was of course loyal to Galvatron, as leader of the Decepticons, he knew that this state of affairs could not continue indefinitely, and he was enough of a pragmatist to know that whatever came next could not possibly be as bad. After the first few demonstrations of the new Decepticon leader's unstable rages, Soundwave had found himself—oddly, for a being as profoundly loyal as he had always been—questioning the wisdom of allowing Galvatron to lead the Decepticons. There had been a few unpleasant moments when he had forced himself to remember that the Megatron he had served was no more; that, even if there was a sane mech somewhere inside the bright new armour and the helpless frothing rage, it wasn't Megatron any more.

Soundwave's loyalty to Megatron had been of a different sort than Cyclonus's loyalty to Galvatron, he reflected now, tracing the scouting party's progress through space. Megatron had been cold, calculating, an impressive military mind in his own right, and Soundwave had never questioned his own decision to follow him: it had been an obvious one, and he had never regretted it. Their relationship had been thoroughly uncomplicated: leader and follower, nothing less, nothing more. Cyclonus, however, was not just Galvatron's loyal right-hand lackey, but seemed to harbour a genuine liking for Galvatron—possibly the only one of them who did. Soundwave sometimes found himself sickened by the jet's consistent acceptance of Galvatron's abuse. He didn't like Cyclonus, but he also didn't like the blatant misuse of energy and time involved in mangling one's own lackeys for no good reason.

Soundwave pushed the thoughts aside; they were unnecessary, and unproductive. He was content to wait things out, and to allow opportunity its entry, whenever it came knocking.


	4. Chapter 4

Unction IV

_But break, my heart, that I must hold my tongue. _

Cyclonus drifted. His astrogation systems were fully active, and he was paying attention to his surroundings with about forty percent of his processing power, but his mind was very far away from the junk of the Quintessa asteroid fields and what they contained; as was becoming more and more common with him, he was thinking about something else. He merely let his body obey its orders and carry him at a respectable clip through space, toward the coordinates Soundwave had given them, while he pondered.

He had woken from recharge with nothing more than a lingering ache in his side and his wingtip; as Hook had predicted, he was perfectly functional. There was still the odd itching sensation of his nanites working to decrystallize the stressed metal of the wing-struts—even in jet mode, he kept wanting to reach up and scratch the trailing edge of his right wing—but nothing he couldn't handle. Which was both a good thing and a bad thing, since being relatively pain-free meant that he could concentrate on other subjects than his own misery.

He rather thought he preferred the misery.

Scourge and three Sweeps were holding their position around him. For once, Scourge was neither needling him nor attempting to engage him in serious conversation—and for once, Cyclonus almost wished he would. There wasn't much out here to distract him from the problem which was sitting firmly in the forefront of his mind. There was no doubt that the seizures were getting worse, and that the attendant debilitating psychosis was reaching the point where Galvatron would soon be unable to command at all. He had _seen_ the madness pass like a magenta filter over Galvatron's optics earlier that morning, in the control room: the colour of the optic sensors seemed to shift suddenly, and then return to their normal Decepticon red; perhaps it had just been an effect of the bluish flares that sparked around his helmet, but he couldn't help thinking that Galvatron's body itself was changing under the onslaught of chaotic and unstable energy.

Cyclonus found himself thinking of the time that Scourge had managed to steal the Autobots' Matrix and install it in himself, and been mutated into a hideous, lumpy, dangerously powerful creature in the process. Was it possible that Galvatron's physical composition, too, was being slowly altered by the poisonous energy given off by the plasma damage? Could he end up like Scourge had—raving, maddened with power and pain, almost unrecognizable as himself?

Cyclonus knew he couldn't let that happen...but there really weren't very many things he could do to stop it, short of somehow reversing time to prevent the plasma submersion in the first place.

"Credit for your thoughts, Cyc," Scourge drawled over the internal comm, surprising him enough so that he jigged slightly, regaining control with ease. _Well...squelching him is better than going over all this again, I suppose._

"What?" he said, in his most chillingly offensive voice. Scourge, undaunted, went on. It was difficult to squelch someone who was used to going into battle with pink-painted claws and a pointy villain beard; when he was in a better mood, Cyclonus found the Sweep leader amusing for his look and for his outlook. Currently he wanted to belabor him around the head and shoulders with one of his own stupid fuselage-wings.

"Well, you're acting funny even for you. Galvatron must've slagged you worse than normal, huh? I mean, that's saying something."

Cyclonus shot him a freezing glare. Scourge nodded to himself, rather ostentatiously. "Thought so. I've never seen him that tweaked." As Cyclonus didn't reply, he added after a moment "I don't get why you just take that kind of slag from him. He's completely wingnuts, Cyc."

"Watch your voice modulator," Cyclonus snapped. "That's insubordination."

"Oh, yeah, what are you going to do? Report me to _Galvatron_? He's so crosswired he wouldn't even know what you were saying." The urge to beat Scourge with his own wings was now beginning to be an urge to shoot a hole directly through him.

"I warn you, Scourge," he growled. "Any more talk like that and I _will_ have you on report. Now be quiet and fly. We aren't far off from the target."

"You ought to watch yourself, Cyc," said the Sweep leader, the bantering tone gone from his voice. "The rest of the Decepticons are getting fed up with this."

"I said _shut up_," Cyclonus said, lead and stone and steel in his voice. "What part of that are you having difficulty processing?"

The voice worked, as the voice always did. Scourge fell back a little and maintained his position in the formation, managing to look subdued even in vehicle mode. The jet ramped up his engines slightly, pulling ahead, and was only vaguely surprised to find that the little exchange had improved his mood considerably.

* * *

Springer gave his microwelder a last jolt, and returned it to subspace. The active guts of the repeater station were back online and fully functional at last; the damage had been minor, just a few meteorite strikes and some short-circuiting, but it had taken him more time than he'd expected to repair. He stood up and closed the access panel, noting with satisfaction that all the telltales on the housing were clear green and steady, and activated the repeller forcefield which had burned out and allowed the micrometeorites through to damage the equipment. 

_Although why they had to send me instead of one of the Protectobots is still a mystery. _He activated his comlink, hailed the Autobot headquarters. "Springer to base, do you read me?"

"Loud and clear," said Ultra Magnus, several light-years away. "What's the situation?"

"Repeater station back online and transmitting. I'm going to head on back."

"Roger," said Magnus. "Good work, Springer. Any sign of Decepticon activity in your area?"

"Negative." Springer looked up; the asteroid they'd selected for their amplification/repeater installation was one of the larger chunks of what had once been Quintessa, deep in the middle of the asteroid field, and the space around him was bright with tumbling reflections from a million fracture planes; the faint purple glow from the repeller field reassured him that even if one of those chunks managed to hit the installation asteroid, it wouldn't make it through to damage the station. "All I see is bits of Quintessa."

"That's good news," said another voice on the comlink. "Come on back, Springer. Arcee's getting worried."

"I am not!" The third voice was indignant: there was some garbled byplay, and then Rodimus came back.

"Watch out, though," he said. "Just because the Cons haven't shown up yet doesn't mean they aren't going to."

"Gotcha." Springer cut the connection and took a last look around before launching himself off the asteroid and heading back into clear space.

A few moments later, as the Autobot's form receded into the distance, another signal—not the one from the repeater station—blinked into life, in the dark half of a chunk of Quintesson debris. There was no voice transmission: there did not need to be. It had all been prearranged.

Back on Cybertron, Rodimus Prime rather wished he had the impersonal faceplate Optimus had worn. It was difficult to keep his face straight. Honestly, the whole thing was so simple it was a bit embarrassing he'd had to be alerted to the possibilities by Punch…but then again one of the archivists had dug up a concept called _synchronicity_, a human word for the phenomenon of coinciding meanings and developments. Had Punch not pointed out the opportunities inherent in the Decepticon high command's current state, complete with sketched-out plan for taking advantage thereof, the fact that the junk-belt repeater station had gone down would have meant little to nothing in the grander scheme of things. But it had, and it was the work of a moment to send out spurious reports of a power installation at those coordinates.

He'd sent Springer out to repair the amplifier, of course, because unlike the Protectobots Springer was extremely good at fighting off Decepticons; if any of them showed up before Rodimus intended them to, Springer would have had no problem getting away safely. He'd have to sacrifice the amplifier station to the Cons, of course, but that was nothing compared to what might be won in return.

Out there in the junkbelt, the signal continued to beat—weakly, irregularly, as if the receiver were badly damaged or losing its battery charge. Beat, beat, beat. When Cyclonus found it, he would be one interested Con.

* * *

"I don't _believe_ this!" Cyclonus spat, hovering in space with his attitudinal jets firing. "The Autobots left a, a _repeater station_ here and our reports mistook it for a power facility? Who the slag is running our intelligence gathering these days?" 

Scourge shrugged his wings. "Thought that was you and Monotone. Falling down on the job, eh, Cyc? We can still blow the Autobots' little communication station to tiny pieces."

"That's not the point, I don't understand it, we've _never_ been wrong about things like this…" Cyclonus let out a grunt of frustrated anger, and pounded his fist against his palm. "I don't like it, Scourge. Any of this. Fan out, be prepared for ambush. It's taken the accursed Autobots long enough to learn subterfuge."

The Sweeps spread out, all their sensors on high alert, watching for any sign of Autobots in hiding. Cyclonus took out the repulsor field around the transmitter with a single burst of his lasers, and relieved his feelings somewhat by smashing the transmitter to shards with his fist. The shock rang along all his recently-repaired wounds, aching sharply.

It seemed as though the universe had finally and irrevocably turned against them, he thought, shaking some life back into his hand and wondering what the sweet molten slag he was going to say to Galvatron when they got back. Bad enough that they'd failed to capture the power station, but that they'd been fooled by some kind of, of Autobot trickery? He knew perfectly well how that would fly with his leader.

Cyclonus stared at the wreck of the comm station dourly and wondered, as he had often wondered recently, if it were worth going back at all.

"Hey!" one of the Swoops called. He looked up—now what, minefields?—but the Swoop was hovering by a twisted bit of Quintessan junk and looking interestedly at something on the other side of it. He exchanged looks with Scourge, and left the ruined transmitter to go and have a look.

The Swoop had found a very battered personal comm/data storage unit of the sort generally carried by travelling merchants. It was giving out a feeble, irregular location signal, as these things did when not activated for a certain length of time: a built-in safety feature.

"Probably some relic of the Quintessons," Cyclonus opined, shrugging. "Worthless. Let's not waste any more time here."

"Hang on, let's hear what it says." Scourge grabbed the unit from his underling and thumbed the replay button. For a moment there was nothing, just static.

"_…from Torqulon, but they're not interested in a fair price…make a note: must hire mercenaries. This could change everything. No lack of customers—something like this that actually does what it says on the package…_"

The recording faded away, as the low-battery light on the little device blinked slower and slower and went out.

"Eh, you were right, Cyc, " said Scourge. "Junk. I'll toss it."

"Wait," said Cyclonus, and put out his hand. "Not yet. I want to hear the rest of that message." The word _Torqulon_ had snared his attention like a hook. Much as he wanted never to have heard of the blasted planet, the few garbled words he'd heard had made him wonder if the rest of it was worth the hearing.

Scourge gave him a _you're going as nutty as Galvatron_ look, but handed over the unit. Cyclonus tucked it away, hoping he'd have time to secure it in his quarters before Galvatron spread him all over the landscape.

"There's nothing else here. Decepticons, back to Charr. I will take full responsibility for the lack of success on this mission."

As he always did.

* * *

For once, though, luck was on Cyclonus's side. When they touched down on Charr and returned to the command center Soundwave was alone before the big screens; and when Scourge and his Swoops had gone, he told Cyclonus that Galvatron was in with Hook, getting some of his subroutines finetuned. Cyclonus was bright enough to catch that this meant the side-effects of his plasma seizures were getting bad enough even for Galvatron to mind them, and thought again of the night he'd passed his quarters in the dark and heard the industrial grinding noises of his leader's body violently offloading energon. 

He nodded, and hurried for his own quarters, leaving a message to be summoned at once when Galvatron was back, and had hooked the little data-storage recorder up to a power feed. It wasn't long before the unit's batteries were back online, and he could cue it up to play the message from the beginning.

Ten minutes later he left his quarters again, the unit's message safely stored in his own central core memory, and went in search of the resident Autobot expert. He vaguely remembered that the mech's name was Counterpunch.


End file.
